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Gabriel Arana

Gabriel Arana is a senior editor at The American Prospect. His articles on gay rights, immigration, and media have appeared in publications including The New Republic, The Nation, Salon, The Advocate, and The Daily Beast.

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Recent Articles

According to the Associated Press, the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal to D.C.'s gay-marriage law brought by Maryland Bishop Harry Jackson . Jackson had sued the district's Board of Elections and Ethics for blocking a public referendum on the issue, which the board -- and the D.C. courts -- said violated the city's Human Rights Act. After the justices agreed to consider the case last week, there was a speculation about what a possible Supreme Court ruling on the gay-marriage referendum would mean. Here at TAP , Adam Serwer made the point that even if the right-leaning Supreme Court allowed a marriage referendum to go forward, the heavily Democratic District might be the first place where marriage rights are put to a popular vote and win. Thankfully, the Court declined to hear the case -- quite a telling move given that it only takes four justices to grant cert . While it is difficult to speculate on the Court's reasoning, given that it did not comment, I think it would be a...

Hey, TAPPED readers. My name is Dara Lind and I'll be providing guest-blogging services for this (MLK Day-shortened) week. Psyched to be here. By way of introducing myself: By upbringing, I'm a New York Yankees fan, secular Jew, and Cincinnatian -- in that order. I'm now living in D.C., where I work for an immigration advocacy group (though any opinions I express on the issue are, of course, mine and not my employer's). Immigration is my main area of policy interest, but when not tearing my hair out over deportation statistics, I find myself thinking about gender, political movements, pop culture, and social science. In the past, I've written about all of these things for Spencer Ackerman , Alyssa Rosenberg , and Matt Yglesias , as well as editing and writing at Wunderkammer Magazine . I'm also (in case it needed to be said around here) an unabashed geek, with fields of geekery including, but not limited to, musical theatre and the Muppets . This week, I hope to raise some tough...

On this week's podcast from The American Prospect : Monica Potts , Jamelle Bouie , and Mark Schmitt talk about Obama 's speech on Giffords -- and Palin 's. Listen Now: To download the mp3 directly, click here . Also, if you just want the RSS feed, it's here . We're on iTunes! Click "subscribe" to the right to get TAP's Take automatically delivered to your iTunes library every week.

From the look of it, there is simply no time to lose in Wisconsin to pass the most draconian and disenfranchising voter-identification law in the country (it surpasses even an extremely controversial Indiana law that requires voters to present government-issued photo ID). The new Republican governor in what's now an all-red state -- all three branches of the government are, after the last election, controlled by Republicans -- wants immediate action so the voter-ID law can be in place before the April 5 election for the state Supreme Court. Another, related bill would write the voter-ID law into the state constitution. Under the proposed Wisconsin bill, voters must present a valid (presumably current) Wisconsin driver's license, military ID, or "identification certificate" issued by the Department of Transportation -- not just any government-issued ID; other forms of government-issued photo identification, including student IDs from public universities, would not be accepted. In...